Mobile messages infused with scent may emanate new ad opportunities

The first scent-tagged image was successfully transmitted recently from Paris to New York via oSnap, a new iOS application that brings scent marketing into the mobile age.

Allowing users to tag photographs with more than 300,000 unique scents known as oNotes, the app permits electronic dissemination sent and received through email, Facebook and Twitter in select hotspots that have the oPhone, the hardware that emits the aroma. The American Museum of Natural History is home of the first oPhone hotspot in the USA, and will open trial to the general public for three weekends in July.

Aroma diffusion is very old. Past technologies have, however, served best at creating an environment of aroma rather than properly communicating aromatically in that aromas diffuse, linger and stick to one's clothes, said David Edwards, founder and CEO of Vapor Communications, Cambridge, MA.

We have created a technology that produces small olfactory messages, cheaply, and brings them easily into electronic discourse and then allows you to download the aromatic message without contaminating your environment. This is all new.

Vapor Communications is the technology company that developed the oPhone and oSnap.

New sensory stimulationThe system integrates a new kind of sensory experience into mobile messaging and a form of communication that has previously been constrained to immediate experiences in the physical world.

Available for free download in the Apple App store , oSnap gives users the ability to snap a photograph and tag any object within the image with scent compositions. Creation of the scents is facilitated by a scrolling window that presents up to 32 unique aromas, of which users can choose from one to eight, resulting in over 300,000 combinations.

Scent-tagging in-app

Users are then able to name the scent-tagged image and send it electronically to friends. Upon receiving an oNote, users can tap the oNote icon and be directed to onotes.com, where they will see the image and associated scents. If users possess an iPhone in Bluetooth proximity to an oPhone, they will be able to download their aromatic message and smell the scents.

Encouraging social share

The first hotspots will be located in Paris, France, New York City, and Cambridge, Massachusetts with more to come. Eventually users will be able to share and experience oNotes anywhere with their personal oPhone.

oPhone system

Sniffing out new vocabularyWe communicate aromatically with the world every day. When we eat, walk through a store, or along a beach. Aromatic signals produce, by the process of olfaction, stronger emotional, physiological and psychological reactions than do visual and auditory signals, and therefore are key not just to our daily lives, but to our very existence.

Any product, service, or environment with a significant aromatic dimensionor emotional objectivewill be better understood, valued, and exchanged by including scent into the message. Scent marketing is a growing industry that allows companies to establish brand identity usi

Michelle Saettler is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily, New York. Reach her at michelle@mobilemarketer.com.